Dear Mr. Micah Grimes of Dallas, Texas,
It is with great pride that I write to inform you that you have been selected for one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports. Your presence is requested immediately at the 2009 Abominably Horrendous Idiots of America Award Ceremony, where you will be receiving the Chad Johnson Honorable Mention for Excellence in Stupidity thanks to your recent actions surrounding Covenant Academy's 100-0 high school girls' basketball win over Dallas Academy. Step right up to the podium please, and allow me to tell everyone why you won.
Mr. Grimes, you are more stupid than a concussed Britney Spears. After coaching Covenant to an utterly humiliating victory, one of the most lopsided scores in the history of basketball, you refused to apologize, saying instead, "I do not believe that the team should feel embarrassed and ashamed. We played the game as it was meant to be played."
Kobe Bryant plays the game right, and even he cedes a basket once in a while. You, on the other hand, allowed your team to jack up three-pointers well through the fourth quarter and ordered your players not to let up on the full-court pressure defense until midway through the final period. Run up the score in a video game, but under no circumstances should you have transferred this win-and-humiliate-at-all-costs sentiment onto the floor that night.
Following the game, you created a rift with the school officials, who stepped up and apologized and went so far as to forfeit the win because of the embarrassment caused. In this fight, you figuratively spit in the administrators' faces, "respectfully disagreeing" with their decision to say sorry. So you were sacked from the job. Serves you right. I hope you never coach again. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt here; maybe you didn't know it was going to be that bad.
Dallas Academy, a school specifically for kids with learning disabilities, had not won a girls' basketball game in over four years. Sign number one that this game was going to be out of hand. Your team then went up by 35 points at the end of the first quarter, 59 at halftime and 88 at the end of the third period — scores some Dallas Academy kids might have a hard time even counting to. Signs number two through 6 billion.
What was going through that single-celled noggin of yours? A coach with even the slightest bit of cojones would have directed his team to stop pressing, instructed his players to pass five times before shooting and spread the wealth around before launching bombs of embarrassment. But you had to affirm your superiority so drastically that you did none of those things, and look what it got you: a pink slip and a stupidity award.
The home page of Dallas Academy posts the following as one of its mission statements: "Confidence is restored. Frustration is lessened. Barriers are overcome." Well, you certainly dismantled their confidence and heightened their frustration, all while posing a barrier roughly the size of the Great Wall. Congratulations, Coach, you have successfully managed to bring down the indomitable spirit of a school populated with kids who surpass learning barriers every day just because you felt that Covenant Academy needed to reach the century mark.
In a later post on a Web site, you said that "if I lose my job over these statements, I will walk away with my integrity." No, you will walk away with nothing but shame. This win is squarely on your shoulders, Mr. Grimes, as is having to answer to the 20 students at Dallas Academy who may have a hard enough time spelling basketball, let alone playing it. At the high-school level, competition is fierce, and it is understood that winning is a priority, but winning with class should be an even bigger one. Class and sportsmanship are absent from your curriculum. In a perfect world, Coach, a Dallas Academy graduate would become your boss and promptly fire you.
And congratulations on your award! Should I send it to your current employer? Oh, wait…
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Alex Prewitt is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Alexander.Prewitt@tufts.edu.
